Futz

This impossibly overboard counterculture spectacle denotes a man's deep romantic feelings for a pig...a love so taboo that even his hillbilly kinfolk are arms-up in horror over it.

It's a musical of sorts, sourced from an Off-Off-Broadway stage piece which apparently generated some degree of enthusiasm in its time. FUTZ is also aggressively pushy with its strangely illustrated, cryptoglyphic sociopolitical commentary, touching mostly on issues of autonomy and sufferance. So, it is what it is...AN EXPERIMENTAL, METAPHORICAL, ZOOPHELIA HILLBILLY MUSICAL. While it's generally immersed in derisive absurdist humor, it alternately crosses some serious, even discomforting junctures along the way.

Sounds too exquisitely nonconformist to pass up, doesn't it?

Well...this raging avalanche of officiously arty grandeur might succeed as a fascinating rumination on creative onanism...it definitely has the requisite freak appeal for a very select entente of outsider types. Mainstreamers, however, won't surrender gently to this megalomaniacal, dope-fueled celluloid spitball.

4/10

Seen as an uncertified film in 1969 it was of its period featuring hillbilly love affairs (including an attractive pig) and very artistic writhing bodies in the desert sands. Of its time and worth old hippies watching for nostalgia.

"All the world's a stage and its people actors in it"--or something like that. Who the hell said that theatre stopped at the orchestra pit--or even at the theatre door? Why is not the audience participants in the theatrical experience, including the story itself?

This film was a grand experiment that said: "Hey! the story is you and it needs more than your attention, it needs your active participation". "Sometimes we bring the story to you, sometimes you have to go to the story."

Alas no one listened, but that does not mean it should not have been said.

Story of a man who has unnatural feelings for a pig. Starts out with a opening scene that is a terrific example of absurd comedy. A formal orchestra audience is turned into an insane, violent mob by the crazy chantings of it's singers. Unfortunately it stays absurd the WHOLE time with no general narrative eventually making it just too off putting. Even those from the era should be turned off. The cryptic dialogue would make Shakespeare seem easy to a third grader. On a technical level it's better than you might think with some good cinematography by future great Vilmos Zsigmond. Future stars Sally Kirkland and Frederic Forrest can be seen briefly.

What is this? A bunch of idiots, a field, a little stage and (too bad for us) a camera. A grand experiment all right, a grand experiment in lousiness. It goes on just like a very bad dream. It's totally unwatchable. I had to watch it in 3 or 4 segments so not to get carried away and throw the tape by the window. It's like watching a 10 hours movie about the life of a cereal or something like that. Just one question pops out: what where they thinking, or smoking when they made that one! And the music, it's so annoying.

Out of 100, I gave it 47. That's good for 0 star out of ****.

Seen at home, in Toronto, on January 2nd, 2003.